As a recent retiree I wanted a compact online device which would enable me to stay in touch but wouldn't take up half of my living room. Blackberries and smartphones were too small and fiddly to consider, but Curry's TV advertising campaign attracted me to the CQ57, which I got for just under £300 and didn't put too large a dent in my retirment fund.

It has proved itself more than adequate for my needs. The screen and keyboard are big enough and the whole thing packs away easily. One criticism is the intial setup. Being an oldie I'm used to ploughing through instruction manuals. All you get with this is a single sheet of paper which tells you how to switch it on. However, if you've never used a laptop before, it can be difficult to get the hang of how you move the cursor in order to locate the online manual (a telephone call to my son, resolved this difficulty). The purchase of a mouse also helped things along. Ideally, an "idiots guide" would prove useful for the benefit of first-timers.

Another gripe is the amount of stuff which automatically loads up onto the laptop. I suspect some of it is a source of revenue for HP, but what I thought were photo and music editing progs turned out to trading websites, which I subsequently deleted. Also, the HP games program on the desktop only gave a couple of tries at a game before the "Buy game" option appeared and put an end to Polar Bowler. Not that it was too much of a problem since that icon was similarly dumped.

All in all, I would recommend this laptop for the part-time discerning user. Just make sure it's your slave and not your master!